SGA Pathway

Catching the Wave

100

What does Student Growth and Achievement mean at Relay?

Liam's gonna be the judge here.

200

Name the 5 Steps of the RGSE Pathway for Measuring Student Achievement. DAILY DOUBLE: Your team can earn double points for this question by performing a song about the 5 Steps of the Pathway to the entire room.

Determine Content, Solidify Assessment Plan, Set Goals, Track Progress, Verify Outcomes

300

Can a teacher be a GREAT teacher is he isn't teaching the right content and actually assessing that content? Why or why not?

No. If a teacher isn't teaching the right content it doesn't matter how much teacher swagger she has, or how much her students love being in the room. Kids will leave the year under-prepared for the year ahead. It's a missed opportunity. Garbage in always equals garbage out.

400

How will YOU ensure YOUR graduate students "catch the wave" of SGA this year?

Liam's gonna be the judge here.

Standards Mastery Pathways

100

A teacher determines content with 86 standards. In three sentences or less, offer feedback on this decision.

It's likely that you are measuring objectives, not standards. A strong set of standards gives clear guidance about what students need to know, understand, and/or be able to do, but doesn't prescribe how the content should be taught on a daily basis. This level of data is too granular for your SGA Pathway.

200

What are three indicators that goals have meaning?

1) you know the goal 2) you know your progress 3) motivated by, invested in, and proud of progress to the goal.

300

Why do we have the coverage requirements for the single and periodic option? Please articulate the requirements and explain their purpose.

Periodic option = 3 items per standard for 100% of the standards. Minimum amount of at-bats needed to draw an inference about student learning. More at-bats would give greater reliability, but we don't want to crush our people with assessments. Single option = 2 items per standard for at least 50% of the standards. Asking for more than this would mean asking our grad students to give too lengthy of an assessment, particularly in the younger grades.

400

Not all assessments are a good measure of standards mastery. What ARE the characteristics of an assessment that adequately assess standards mastery? (Hint: they are refreshing)

S Sizable O Obtainable D Defensible A Aligned S Summative

Growth Pathways

100

A student grows 1.66 years in reading growth as measured by the STEP assessment. Did she meet her Student-Specific Ambitious Goal?

Dunno. Depends on where she started the year relative to grade level.

200

What does it mean to “hit the assessment ceiling?” What should you do if you notice that a small handful of students in your class will hit the assessment ceiling?

This means that the assessment does not "go high enough" to capture all of the learning your students may have made. For instance, a running record that ends at a 3rd grade level would not be able to capture the growth of a student now reading at a 4th grade level. If only a couple of students are in this boat, remove them from your dataset and set an alternative goal for those students.

300

Why is the Ambitious Goal higher for a 6-point rubric than for a 4-point rubric for writing growth?

Here's an example why: 2 points on a 4-point rubric is half-way. 3 points on a 6-point rubric is half-way. More points possible, equals more points needed to show same amount of growth. The Goals are proportionally equivalent. One isn't "higher" than the other.

400

Explain the importance of an "apples-to-apples" measure for growth goals.

in order to see growth, you must use the same assessment at the beginning-of-year and end-of-year. Otherwise you'll be seeing performance on that assessment, not growth over time.

Character Pathways

100

A teacher is measuring grit with her class. What is more impressive: one point of growth in teacher indicator scores, or one point growth in student indicator scores?

Neither. This is a trick question. Both are subjective. Be careful not to make overarching claims about your character data.

200

What are the completion requirements for required character data?

four rounds of 100% complete teacher- and student-level data.

300

What character strength should a grad student measure for her character goal?

Any strength that is relevant and important to his students! We recommend one of the great eight because you will receive the most instruction around those at Relay, but this is not necessary.

400

Explain the challenge with measuring character and why we've created our character goal metric.

Character is a more subjective measure, and is influenced by the scorer's perception of that character trait at that point in time. Also, we don't have a ton of historical data to rely upon like we do for academics. We have our metric because it mean that on average, teachers and students believe it is like the class to posses the selected character strength by the EOY and that is a good thing.

Trackers

100

Please share 3 useful tracker tips you learned this week. You can share excel shortcuts, excel formulas, or general tips. Each of the 3 tips has to be something that at least one of you didn't know before this week.

Sample answers: 1) Make sure the data mirrors the format of the Relay tracker before cutting and pasting 2) Copy paste as "values only" 3) Use the "transpose" button when data is horizontally displayed and you need it vertically displayed 4) You can can drag down the corner of a cell to apply a formula in a cell to an entire column 5) There is a simple excel formula (involving =left) that will allow you to remove last names and be left with just the last initial!

200

If graduate students need help from [e-mail], how far in advance should they send in their trackers prior to a module assessment due date?

At least one week in advance of the due date.

300

Please name the 4 RGSE trackers and briefly describe how they function. DAILY DOUBLE: If there is someone on your team who truly hearts trackers by this point of Faculty Seminar, they will have the opportunity to score your team double points for this question if they walk into the middle of the office, stand on a chair and say, "Yes everyone it's true. I LOVE trackers."

1) Reading Growth 2) Writing Growth 3) Standards Mastery 4) Character Tracker Whoever did the daily double is our new hero!

400

On the standards mastery tracker, on each assessment tab is an "overall assessment average." How does that average differ from the "overall average standards mastery" on the final tab?

The overall assessment average is a pure average (test score). The overall average standards mastery is calculated as an average of averages that weights each standard equally when computing the overall average standards mastery.